Mass Sabbath

music

Paul Sebring, the thin young guitarist from local punk group Screaming Infidels, stands behind six stacks of t-shirts sporting the heavy font typical of Black Sabbath albums. The front of his sleeveless leather vest opens on a bare chest, and a sandy mullet wig sits atop his close-cropped hair, nearly matching the color. The newest member of Mass Sabbath, a group of locals that gathers each Halloween to perform a set of Black Sabbath cover songs, Sebring is stuck on merchandise detail during a set by the opening band, Valkyrie; two women in their 50s, one wearing a floor-length velvet cape, browse through t-shirts while the Valkyrie boys rip through Iron Maiden-inspired leads, harmonizing in searing blasts.

Aaron Sanders, bassist of local metal outfit Horsefang, walks the floor of the Satellite Ballroom, which is slowly filling with costumes and black-clad Ozzy Osbourne fans. Channeling deceased Metallica bassist Cliff Burton, Sanders wears a short-but-full moustache and a Misfits t-shirt beneath a denim jacket; his brown hair, usually restrained, hangs long.

Sean Chandler tended bar last year for Mass Sabbath Volume 3, the first year the event was held at Satellite Ballroom. This year, Chandler is behind the bar again, sporting a polyester shirt open to his chest hair, black-rimmed eyes and a blood-rimmed nose. While Chandler mainly sticks behind the bar, Danny Shea, the manager of the Satellite Ballroom, stays busy around the Ballroom in his usual Chicago Cubs jacket. Before the concert, Shea took his daughter trick-or-treating on the UVA Lawn, but most of the candy had already been plucked from the Lawn residents’ bowls.

Outside the Ballroom, a few kids in leather and jeans lean against the railing that parallels the Ballroom, smoking. Nicholas Liivak, Horsefang’s lead guitarist and the director of operations for the annual Mass Sabbath production, heads inside to finish his costume—he decided to perform as INXS singer Michael Hutchence, who died of autoerotic asphyxiation, and just realized that Hutchence hung himself with a belt rather than a tie. The costume goes on.

Ghouls night out! The fourth incarnation of Mass Sabbath slays a crowd (not literally, folks; casualties were minimal) during its annual Halloween set at the Satellite Ballroom.

Mass Sabbath takes to a black stage sometime before 11pm to strap their instruments on. When the lights go up, they fall on the white face-paint and black eye sockets of two drummers, three guitarists, two bassists and singer Butch Klotz, who wears black boxers shorts to cover himself from upper thigh to lower waist and thick stripes of black and white paint to cover the rest. The band opens with the epic "Hands of Doom" and expands the track to the length of three songs; by the third movement, heads are banging back and forth in the most classic of heavy metal motions, equal parts dance and homage.

For all the enormity of this year’s Mass Sabbath lineup, the band members exercise discretion in song choices, skipping obvious-if-overplayed Sabbath tunes (no "Iron Man") for songs that play up Sabbath’s most wrenching tempo shifts (hearing two drummers play the pounding fills in "N.I.B." while Klotz sings "My name is Lucifer/ Please take my hand" is a highlight).

"Ozzy has a powerful whiskey headache," Klotz says halfway through the band’s first set. "More didn’t help." The lights are lowered and the band plows through "Faeries in Boots," but the music seems a bit soused; despite Liivak’s attempts to corral his fellow guitarists with hand motions, a few leads are sloppy, the Bride of Frankenstein (Marie Landragin) falling all over Sebring’s solos.

But the second set is a different corpse altogether: After a brief break, the band re-emerges with a three-piece string set, all members showing more skin and fake blood, Klotz’s body paint smearing into a messy black swirl, and launches into a mini-orchestral set of "Sweet Leaf," "Children of the Grave" and "Snowblind." All three songs, long-time fan favorites, are tight as coffin lids and, though the crowd begins to dwindle as the night gets later, the remaining listeners are ecstatic.

Halfway through "Lord of this World," played just before Mass Sabbath Volume 4 closes with "War Pigs," "Ozzy" Klotz rips the head from a rubber bat with his teeth and spits blood that spatters his own chest before throwing the creature into the audience. Listeners’ bodies sway heavily with beer, distortion and the desire for sleep, two belly dancers sway together, a Sid dances with a Nancy and the three guitarists line up, six strings, six strings, six strings.